Dietitians are in consensus: diets are important. Individual nutrients, specific foods or single meals need to be considered as part of a person’s dietary pattern before they rise to the level of health significance.

For years, it’s been annoying to see the creeping acceptance of the contrary view, embracing a “good food/bad food” dichotomy based on the obvious fallacy that any food or any meal raises or lowers the likelihood of good or bad health outcomes. Groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) take this wrong road right to the very end; their membership solicitations try to frighten the gullible into shunning “10 foods you should never eat.” Truth is: all of these foods can be part of a healthy diet. Not only is the variety of nutrients, foods and meals important, but examining dietary patterns allows consideration for the complex nutrient interactions that take place when we eat.

We’ve known the importance of healthy diets for centuries. Five years ago, Dr. Ashima Kant documented how dietary patterns (not foods, not meals) are related to chronic disease outcomes (JADA , 2004;104:615-35). Now, just in time for the 2010 revision of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, two studies published in the past month offer further support to reversing the slide into the “good food/bad food” fallacy. Both employ rigorous scientific methodology to reach their conclusions. And those conclusions are:

• With regard to coronary heart disease there is “strong evidence of a causal link between CHD and dietary patterns ” with cohort studies demonstrating the protective effect of vegetables, nuts and monounsaturated fatty acids and three defined dietary patterns that incorporate these elements: the Mediterranean Diet and what Dr. Andrew Mente and colleagues at McMaster University call the “prudent” and “high quality” dietary patterns. On the other side, the current “western diet” and diets with high glycemic loads create health risks. Of these, only the Mediterranean Diet has been proven effective in randomized controlled trials. Think about all the dietary recommendations – and, even more, recommendations on various foods or types of meals – that are advocated constantly but which lack a foundation in medical science.
• Using dietary recall to evaluate dietary quality is difficult, so a simple surrogate indicator, a biomarker, would be a valuable aid to determine if our individual – or our population – diets are meeting our quality objectives. And now such a boimarker has been validated . That marker is urinary potassium. The higher the urinary potassium, the better the diet. Given that sodium is the electrolyte that’s been accorded the most emphasis (on food labels, in advertising, etc.) the researchers also examined urinary sodium as a marker of diet quality. They found sodium to be a poor surrogate for overall dietary quality (despite the fact that the model included a sodium component whereby higher sodium intakes would be “unhealthy” so that modeled disadvantage was overcome by other dietary factors). Dr. Mente, this time with a team at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, conducted the analysis. They concluded that “a single 24-h urinary K+ measure is a clinically valid, simple, and inexpensive ($10.00 in Canada) test of overall diet quality.”

So, when you hear CSPI or some other do-good advocate suggest that eating a particular food or avoiding another is good for you, take it with a grain of salt. If they tell you that meals with too much of any nutrient (sodium, certainly, but also fat or some other target of opportunity) is bad for you, tell them to read the science first.

The Mediterranean Diet, the only one proven in controlled trials to actually improve health, has about 30% more salt than the average American diet today. Perhaps coincidentally the only randomized controlled trial of the health outcomes of a low-salt diet was also done in Italy. It confirmed that low-salt diets not only failed to deliver expected health benefits, but actually placed those cutting back on salt at additional risk.

Perhaps the quality science pushing forward our understanding of the importance of dietary patterns and overall diet quality will displace the loud, but scientifically-unsupported calls to cut out this nutrient or that, forego eating traditional and tasty foods and avoiding meals that don’t pass muster with the food police.

At the bottom, I'll fill-in-the-blanks (asterisks), but see if you don't see how accurately this reports the situation when the Salt Institute and US Chamber challenged HHS with a Data Quality Act petition on the DASH-Sodium study.

* Suit Says Law Requires Federal Agencies To Use Sound Science
Appeal Argues Statements on ** Must be Accurate

On April 14, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments from * on why such federal agencies as Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must correct the inaccurate information they disseminate about **.

In late 2007, a lower court accepted the government's contention that there is no right to judicial review under the Data Quality Act, effectively reducing the law a friendly request, without ruling on the merits of *'s claims.

Arguing on behalf of *that the laws Congress passes have consequences that federal agencies cannot ignore was noted legal scholar Alan Morrison, who founded Public Citizen's Litigation Group and taught administrative law at Stanford. "Citizens have a right to expect the government to be transparent and to use the best available information for policy decisions," said Morrison. "Unfortunately, so far, the government has been anything but transparent and has failed to produce any evidence for its policy statements on **."

While the law says federal agencies must rely on sound science when disseminating information to the public, the petition filed by * in October 2004 marked the first serious test of the Data Quality Act, which was passed by Congress in 1999. After more than two years of delay by the federal government that culminated in a refusal to act on the petition, * filed a lawsuit in February 2007 asking the courts to direct the agencies to comply with the law.

The respected magazine Science published an editorial on the case that year, claiming that HHS had "violated its own DQA guidelines."

At issue are such statements as "there have been no studies that have scientifically assessed **"We welcome the Obama Administration's recently stated commitment to making policy decisions based on science, not politics," said ____, Chief Counsel with *. "This case is designed to ensure that the federal government's policy on ** is not politically motivated."

On March 9, 2009, President Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of executive departments and agencies stating that, "The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions," and calling for "transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking."

During oral arguments, attorney for the government told the three-judge panel that there were simply too many facts in the world to require the government's statements about them all to be accurate.

We'd only note that we think our Salt Institute v. Leavitt was the "first serious test of the Data Quality Act," but, otherwise this newsletter from *Americans for Safe Access (ASA) about **medical marijuana reads like a sequel to our attempt to compel HHS to comply with the DQA and make available replicable data it was using for policy decisions and (mis)portraying on its website.

We hope ASA fares better than we did. The appeals court in our case upheld, in the language of the ASA newsletter, "the government's contention that there is no right to judicial review under the Data Quality Act, effectively reducing the law (to) a friendly request without ruling on the merits." Good luck.

Fearmongering prevails. Fearing their diets may mean risk of chronic disease, consumers seek to lower their risks by using "healthy" foods, whose unhealthy ingredients are reduced or eliminated. But is seems there is no escape: health conscious, label-reading food purchasers should be fearful, too according to Wall Street Journal Health section reporter Melinda Beck. Beck asks "What's really in many 'healthy' foods?" She answers using salt substitutes as an example where consumers are misled into thinking "healthy" confers some health benefit to them personally. Regarding salt substitutes, she explains:

If you're trying to cut down on salt, check with your doctor before you start using a salt substitute. Most contain potassium chloride, which can exacerbate kidney problems and interact badly with some heart and liver medications.

With only a bit more research, Beck could have noted the other "healthy" additives used to replace salt. Besides potassium chloride, salt replacers include calcium chloride, magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts) and various metal ion replacers as well as various other proprietary chemicals.

Food manufacturers also try to reduce the natural salt content of their foods by using "salt enhancers" that include: 5-ribonucleotides, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, inosine 5-monophosphate, 5'-guanidylic acid, glycine monoethyl ester, L-lysine, L-arginine, lactates, Mycosent, Trehalose, L-ornithine, Ornithyl-β-alanine, monosodium glutamate and Alapyridaine (N-(1-Carboxethyl)-6-hydroxymethyl-pyridinium-3-ol).

Salt is a natural bitterness inhibitor. To give "healthy" -- but bitter -- low-sodium foods acceptable taste, food producers sometimes replace salt with 2,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid. Now that's real "health food"!

Dietary salt's use in food is as Winston Churchill said about democracy being "the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

Every day, we learn more and more about the metabolism of salt and mechanism of its role in maintaining balance or homeostasis within our circulatory system. Some of the most interesting work continues to come from a Europe-wide collaborative group based in Germany. Their latest work entitled, “Macrophages regulate salt-dependent volume and blood pressure by a vascular endothelial growth factor-C–dependent buffering mechanism,” was just published online by Nature Medicine .

This new data provides valuable insights into the role of the mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS) cell and lymphatic function in the context of maintaining intracellular Na+ homeostasis. Cells of the mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS) are found in large numbers in every organ of the body, where they contribute to innate and acquired immunity and fluid balance. When rats are fed high salt diets, the extra accumulation of sodium ions that occurs in excess of compensating water results in local hypertonicity or increased pressures that provokes a tissue-specific regulatory cascade, with the macrophages releasing vascular endothelial growth factor-C (VEGF-C) which acts protective protein to maintain a constant intracellular volume. This mechanism then restructures the existing lymph capillary network and to manage this increased pressure.

The researchers conclude that the complex MPS-derived secretion of VEGF-C in states of sodium-induced intracellular hypertonicity functions to moderates blood pressure.

Their findings move the prevailing view of the salt volume–blood pressure relationship from a simpler two-compartment model to a more dynamic three-compartment model in which the interstitial (intracellular) spaces in tissues feature as a separately regulated space that also relies on tissue-specific mechanisms to maintain internal osmo- or pressure regulation.

While we caution that this work was done with rats -- and at experimentally huge salt intake levels to demonstrate the mechanism -- and, therefore, has no human health policy implications at this point, the study usefully reveals how complex a system we have evolved to manage and balance all components of our diet.

The headline in yesterday's USA Today declared: "Food doesn't have to take up a huge chunk of your budget." Reporter Jayne O'Donnell reports that the Food Marketing Institute will release a report Sunday showing that more consumers are eating at home: 85% eat a home cooked meal three or more times a week, up from 75% in 2006 (personally, I find that astoundingly low, but, then, my wife's an excellent cook and backyard barbeque season is upon us so maybe my home-cooked lifestyle is abnormal).

Since the end of WWII, there has been a notable trend for Americans to eat more foods prepared outside the home, both in restaurants and packaged, processed foods, perhaps heated at home, but not "home cooked." Depending on FMI's definition, perhaps the country's current economic travails will blunt or reverse a parallel trend: a gradual erosion of round can sales of table salt: a reliable indicator of the amount of "home cooking" being done.

Basil S. Hetzel, AC, MD, FRCP, emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Adelaide, Australia and the first/founding Executive Director of International Council for the Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders (ICCIDD ), has been honored to receive the 2009 Pollin Prize . The award ceremony was held in New York City this week.

ICCIDD, The Network for the Sustained Elimination of Iodine Deficiency and other global health agencies (WHO , UNICEF , UN World Food Program , and Gates Foundation-funded GAIN ) agree that iodizing salt is the most sustainable solution to global IDD problems .

The Pollin Prize has only six previous winners (it is not awarded annually; only when contributions are judged outstanding). It is comforting that a second salt-related winner has also been recognized. The inaugural winners in 2002 were three Americans (Norbert Hirschorn, MD, David R. Nalin, MD and Nathiel F. Pierce) and one Indian, MD Dilip Mahalanabis,MD, who were honored for their contributions promoting Oral Rehydration Therapy . ORT uses salt/sugar solutions to combat diarrhea.

The award recognizes Dr. Hetzel for:

His pioneering work led to our understanding of the effects of iodine deficiency on brain development – and the importance of incorporating iodized salt in the diet to prevent brain damage in newborns.

Dr. Hetzel's research team in Papua New Guinea (1964-1972) established that brain damage could be prevented by correction of iodine deficiency before pregnancy. This groundbreaking research led him to begin a worldwide campaign to incorporate iodized salt into the diets of more than two billion people in some 130 countries where iodine is lacking.

The World Health Organization now recognizes that iodine deficiency is the most common preventable cause of brain damage in the world today.

Dr. Hetzel's efforts have prevented brain damage in millions of children. We honor his vision, leadership and discovery.

In 2002, the Pollin Prize committee pronounced ORT "The most important medical discovery of the 20th Century." It's hard to name any more significant -- unless it is iodizing salt!

I was the guest presenter at DTN Meterologix 's webinar yesterday on the salt supply situation. Some member company personnel monitored the webinar; if you missed it, you can view the presentation online .

Mort Satin and I today filed a letter (pdf 103.06 kB) with the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee lamenting their decision to convert a public meeting next week into a webinar with no face-to-face interaction. We told the DGAC:

This runs directly counter to the Administration’s encouragement of greater transparency. We earlier registered our continued disappointment that the Committee has turned its back on another Administration commitment – to improve the process in considering science. By not pre-defining quality standards for inclusion in the evidence-based review process being utilized, the Committee invites the same kind of selective, expert opinion criticisms leveled at earlier panels.

Our letter registered process concerns on several issues:

1. Failure to upgrade to a true evidence-based process as recommended by the Institute of Medicine, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the Cochrane Collaboration.
2. Failure to insulate against the prejudicial policy bias of DGAC leaders. We pointed out how the 2000 Guidelines had reversed course on its recommendations for fat when they determined "the recommendation to lower fat intake had been ill-advised and might actually create harm." With leaders pre-judging the issue, the DGAC will find it difficult to ease the salt guideline to reflect the failure of scientific studies to identify a health benefit.
3. Some DGAC members seem to equate salt "disappearance" data with human consumption, but government and university research shows that between 27% and 50% of foods are wasted and many food technologies using salt do not result in that salt ending up in the final product. We offered as examples of "wastage" that 80-90% of salt in koshering meats, 60-80% used in cheese curing, 80-95% used in processing frozen vegetables, 75-80% used in canning, 75-80% used in preparing pickles, sauerkraut and olives, 60-75% used in salting fish and 85-90% used in home cooking water for pasta, vegetables, etc. is discarded after the food is prepared and not ultimately ingested. Overall, we estimated 30-50% shrinkage.
4. We reminded Committee members that any successful replacement of salt in food products would require massive use of salt substitute chemicals with long chemical names that consumers might find problematic since none have been tested in the huge amounts that would be ingested if large-scale salt replacement was achieved.

Salt Institute member Industria Salinera de Yucatan , headquarted in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico was honored late last month at the 2^nd International Conference on the Ecological Importance of Solar Saltworks (CEISSA 2009) in Merida, March 26-28.

ISYSA President Eduardo Roche was honored for his efforts to preserve the environment of ISYSA's Las Coloradas saltfield located inside the Ria Lagartos Biosphere. The company also recently earned the Clean Industry Certification seal from the Mexican Secretary of Environmental Protection. ISYSA’s environmental accomplishments include preservation of nearby wetlands, support for turtle banding on the Las Coloradas beaches, restoration of roads and beaches of nearby towns after hurricanes, rescuing nearby flamingo colonies after hurricanes, and promoting an annual educational program by the nongovernmental organization--Niños y Crías A.C.—where adults and children band juvenile flamingoes.

The conference was held in honor of Dr. Joseph S. Davis, Professor Emeritus of the University of Florida, for his pioneering work on the relationship of biological processes and solar salt manufacture.

Another Salt Institute member, Salins , based in Paris, France, presented on how they manage their two Mediterranean saltworks as environmentally protected areas.

ISYSA hosted the conference which was organized by Sergio Ortiz of ISYSA, Dr. Themistocles Lekkas of the University of the Aegean, and Nikos Korovessis of Hellenic Saltworks. Presentations emphasized the environmental friendliness of the solar salt-making industry, mainly through wetland preservation. The conference attracted global participation with delegates from Argentina, China, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Switzerland, and the U.S.

Today's Wall Street Journal carried a story on "Why we need less sodium." While the question may provoke different opinions, I'm reminded of the observation that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but nobody is entitled to their own facts.

The article collects oft-repeated myths, perpetuating public confusion. Consider:

• Americans consume the average amount of salt of societies around the world. The article states we consume "15 times" too much. The National Academy of Sciences says humans can survive on 500 mg. But good health requires more.
• The article states that salt intake has increased “50% since the 1970s.” The truth is that per capita salt intakes haven't increased at all. Not since the 1970s and not in the past century. That’s a total fabrication.
• Thus, the implication is that we eat too much salt. That is unfounded. Those with the best health outcomes consume salt at current levels. At the government’s “recommended” 2,300 mg level, cardiovascular mortality is actually higher, more than a third greater (37%), according to the federal government’s own National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

National policy should be based on more than opinion and that there should be a controlled trial to establish whether reducing dietary salt improves health. Evidence-based groups like the government’s U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the Cochrane Collaboration which invented the concept, have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to ask everyone to reduce salt. Unfotunately, the article doesn't even hint at the controversy among expert scientists.

Elsewhere we cover the first rigorous examination of possible causal links between diet and heart disease . The study appeared in the April 13 edition of the American Medical Association's Annals of Internal Medicine . Its authors are with McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, the Canadian epicenter of "evidence-based medicine."

The authors provide context noting: "The relationship between dietary factors and coronary heart disease (CHD) has been a major focus of health research for almost a half century." The vast literature with discordant results, however, "has generated confusion among health care professionals, policy makers, and the population at large who are interested in this information to aid them in CHD prevention strategies."

The study sets the standard for evidence-based reviews and is entirely different from the approach being utilized right now by the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee which is utilizing the old traditional "expert panel" approach. Referencing the 2005 US Dietary Guidelines (and equally applicable to the ongoing 2010 revision process), the authors lament:

....little direct evidence from RCTs supports these recommendations. In come cases the RCTs have not been conducted, and RCTs that have been conducted have generally not been adequately powered or have evaluated surrogate end points rather than clinical outcomes. Despite this lack of information evidence-based recommendations derived from cohort studies have been advocated. This is cause for concern because dietary advice to limit the intake of a certain nutrient (i.e. dietary fat) may result in increased consumption of another (i.e. carbohydrates), which can have adverse effects on CHD risk factors. Moreover, without large prospective studies in which multiple health outcomes are evaluated, recommendations to modify a dietary component may decrease teh likelihood of one chronic disease (i.e. CHD) at the cost of increasing another (i.e. cancer)

The authors conclude that there is

strong evidence of a causal link between CHD and dietary patterns. Population-based cohort studies have demonstrated the protective effect of a quality diet against CHD and all-cause mortality. ...Dietary patterns have the advantage of taking into account the complex interactions and cumulative effects of multiple nutrients within the entire diet....

This study should become required reading for the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee which seems to be retreating both from objective science and transparent process. As these authors note: "Our study has a number of strengths because we undertook several measures to minimize bias" (which it proceeded to discuss). In contrast, the DGAC appointed an anti-salt zealot, a member of the rabidly anti-salt WASH advocacy group, to chair its salt subcommittee. So much for "measures to minimize bias."

Oh, and by the way, the study found

strong evidence of a causal relationship for protective factors including intake of vegetables, nuts and monounsaturated fatty acids and Mediterranean, prudent and high quality dietary patterns, and harmful factors, including intake of trans-tatty acids and foods with a high glycemic index or load and a western dietary pattern. Among these dietary exposures, however, only a Mediterranean dietary pattern has been studied in RCTs and significantly associated with CHD.

If trhat sound like what regular readers of the Salt Institute's Salt and Health newsletter have been reading about in recent years, particularly about the true nature of evidence-based reviews , how those standards are perverted in the US Dietary Guidelines process and the importance of dietary patterns , we hope that's because we, too, try to be evidence based -- but we cannot claim the exemplary rigor of these researchers who clearly practice what they preach.

The latest trend exposed by the NPD Group’s 23^rd Annual Report on Eating Patterns in America , is the focus on adding healthful ingredients to diets, rather than limiting food items. The percentage of adults supplementing their diets with beneficial ingredients such as whole grains, fiber, antioxidants and Omega-3 fatty acids has been increasing since 2005. According to NPD, a market research firm, the percentage of consumers trying to eliminate trans-fats, cholesterol, sodium, caffeine, sugar and carbohydrates has declined drastically since the late 1980s and early 1990s.

According to NPD’s report, the number of dieters reporting that they are adhering to a low salt diet has decreased significantly since 2001, when 5.4% indicated they were on a low salt diet. In 2008, only 3.4% of dieters reported adhering to a low salt diet.

Despite the efforts of the “food police” and alarmists who focus on single dietary items rather than whole diets, it appears that an increasing number of Americans are taking a more common sense approach to their overall diets. Bombarded with a constant barrage of mixed messages regarding nutrition perhaps they are getting back to the basics that most of us heard at the dinner table growing up: “Eat your vegetables so you will grow big and strong.” “Don’t eat too many cookies or you will get fat.” Note that our parents didn’t say, “Eat only vegetables” or “Don’t eat ANY cookies”. Yet public policy makers often take extreme approaches that make our parents look like they were complete pushovers.

Ultimately a vast body of data supports what our parents told us. We should eat a well balanced diet rich in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low-fat dairy and lean meats. There is not one magic ingredient in our diets to make us healthy and there is not one “poison pill”. Or as my grandmother would say, “All things in moderation.”

A new publication in this week's Annals of Internal Medicine illustrates the importance of distinguishing evidence-based reviews from more political conclusions by expert groups as employed, for example, in the creation of the US Dietary Guidelines or the World Health Organization's diet recommendations. Andew Mente, et al released "A Systematic Review of the Evidence Supporting a Causal Link Between Dietary Factors and Coronary Heart Disease ." They followed an examplary procedure, defining how they would analyze the evidence before actually digging into the subject content of any of the studies. First they identifed 5,705 medical journal articles on diet and heart disease. They then applied pre-established rules on their strength, consistency, temporality (exposure before outcome) and coherence, and then considered biological gradient, experimental evidence, specificity (avoiding multiple risk exposures), biological plausibility and the avoidance of analogy. These comprise the rigorous Bradfor Hill Criteria for Assessing Causation.

The "blind" screening process netted 146 prospective cohort studies and 94 randomized controlled trials that were then analyzed to answer the question: what does medical science tell us about diet and heart disease? The results of the study, in the authors' words:

Strong evidence supports valid associations (4 criteria satisfied) of protective factors, including intake of vegetables, nuts, and "Mediterranean" and high-quality dietary patterns with CHD, and associations of harmful factors, including intake of trans–fatty acids and foods with a high glycemic index or load. Among studies of higher methodologic quality, there was also strong evidence for monounsaturated fatty acids and "prudent" and "western" dietary patterns. Moderate evidence (3 criteria) of associations exists for intake of fish, marine -3 fatty acids, folate, whole grains, dietary vitamins E and C, beta carotene, alcohol, fruit, and fiber. Insufficient evidence (2 criteria) of association is present for intake of supplementary vitamin E and ascorbic acid (vitamin C); saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids; total fat; -linolenic acid; meat; eggs; and milk. Among the dietary exposures with strong evidence of causation from cohort studies, only a Mediterranean dietary pattern is related to CHD in randomized trials.

Some interpreted the finding as disappointing because the evidence found only a limited number of dietary causes of heart disease -- unlike the huge number of alleged relationships read about in the newspapers almost daily. As USA Today summed it up: "What we know for sure about diet and what protects the heart is a relatively short list." The Systematic Review validated the Salt Institute's dietary advocacy: a quality diet embodying the Mediterranean Diet without regard to any concern about salt intake is the best thing for heart health. No evidence implicated salt as a cause of coronary heart disease.

Rather than disappointment, we should cheer the conclusion that "evidence supports a valid association of a limited number of dietary factors and dietary patterns with CHD." Since we've been largely unsuccessful in changing Americans' dietary patterns, having greater agreement on a limited number of interventions that are proven effective sounds like a real breakthrough to us.

Dr. Steven R. Covey, management guru, teaches as one of his "Seven Habits" to "begin with the end in mind." The key here is that the focus of science and health is the end of preserving the integrity of the science by rigorously following quality scientific methods. The "end" is not finding evidence to support a pre-determined policy preference. Thank you, doctors, for this outstanding reminder that process can determine outcomes and that data-driven conclusions are far more valuable than expert opinion.

Stay tuned to see how the experts on the Dietary Guidelines greet this study.

Mort Satin, Director of Technical and Regulatory Affairs at the Salt Institute addressed the Institute of Medicine 's Committee on Strategies to Reduce Sodium on March 30 at their 2nd Information-Gathering Workshop . He cautioned the Committee to use great caution and to read all the peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature before making any recommendation for a population-wide reduction of salt intakes. He stated that "you cannot simply reduce salt - salt has to be replaced or enhanced with something else and once you begin to modify flavor profiles, you embark on an endless journey of adding nuances and counter-nuances to correct off-flavors or dis-functionalities introduced by the previous additive, until you are left with a cocktail of complex industrial chemicals in the final food product. The very concept of replacing salt with an arsenal of synthetic chemical that have never been tested for their interactions and toxicities at the levels they are projected to be consumed at, if they replace salt, is highly questionable. It is no different than replacing animal fats with trans fats or cane sugar with the several unpronounceable industrial chemicals we call sugar replacers today. All these chemical replacers distort the consumer’s perspective and promote greater overall consumption of food. Sooner or later, a fuller understanding of their toxicities will be revealed, and it is this Committee that will have to bear the responsibility for the ill-conceived strategy that prompted their widespread adoption."

You can read the full statement here (pdf 98.90 kB) .

The motoring public will enjoy the fruits of the most recent report from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. Entitled "Performance Measures for Snow and Ice Control Operations ," the Web-only report of NCHRP Project 6-17 is the latest of a valuable series of new reports that significantly raise the professionalism of winter operations.

One the public progressed beyond the "it's winter, we should stay at home when there's snow and ice on the road" or, the Sunbelt version "it will melt in the next day or two," public works managers were expected to engage Mother Nature to preserve winter roadway safety and mobility. At first, policy-makers and voters were satisfied that their snowfighter employees were out there fighting the good fight. Agencies reported fuel use, personnel time/overtime and whether they calibrated their spreaders -- input measures. They graduated in the past 20-30 years to output measures like lane-miles plowed, tons of salt applied, number of plows employed and the cost per lane-mile. Real professionals delivered to standard.

The latest plateau is the get a handle on how all these inputs and outputs actually work. "Performance measures" have been the objective for at least the last decade and modern, professional snowfighting agencies and contractors expect to be judged on how well their efforts deliver the ultimate product: the safest roadway possible carrying satisfied customers.

The National Cooperative Research Program has just released an important research report identifying the methods and measures for assessing snowfighters' performance. It's a "modern classic," certain to achieve instant impact and guide the provision -- and evaluation -- of winter snow and ice operations for years to come.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Maze and his colleagues at Iowa State University.

After identifying eleven outcomes measures, the report reduces them to three categories with two recommended approaches for each. These include:

Degree of clear pavement as measured by manual observation or camera-assisted observation.

Traffic flow as measured by detectors of speed, volume and cooupancy or by road closure.

Crash risk as measured by friction (slipperiness) or reported crashes.

More even than professional snowfighters and those who allocate the (often tax) resources to support effective winter maintenance, all roadway users now have proven tools to determine if the job is being done properly. It usually is and snowfighters can now enjoy the respect they've well-earned.

The report identified 15 measures of "winter storm severity" attempting to calibrate the magnitude the the vast variety of storm conditions facing snowfighters. None of the agencies surveyed in the study have been able to devise a workable severity index. Many agencies also reported using "customer satisfaction" measures to help assess their snowfighting performance and determine how closely their efforts meet public expectations. Most use periodic public opinion surveys, some track 511 calls and telephone complaints. The report urges documenting best practices of measuring how well snowfighters meet public expectations. The report also recommends further research between snowfighting performance metrics and roadway safety.